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JENAM

So… it’s probably about time I started using this blog properly. 🙂

Music and Astronomy event at JENAM 2009

I’m currently at JENAM, which is a combination of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Annual General Meeting and the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting. It’s based at The University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield. Its starting event was a buffet (free food and drinks; always good), followed by a Music and Astronomy event. Although I was a bit dubious going in, this turned out to be quite a good event – classical music combined with an overview of the history of the relationship between music and astronomy (the two are linked by a surprising number of things). Hopefully the image on the right gives a flavour of the event: strings on the left (with a piano on the far left; sadly I couldn’t get this in as well), with two speakers on the right and Jon Culshaw in the middle interjecting quotes in the style of various famous people (Sir Patrick Moore, George Brown, George Bush, …).

The speakers (and percussionist) at the Music and Astronomy event at JENAM

On the left are the people leading the evening: the right-most two are Alice Williamson and Dr. Robert Priddey, who were narrating the event, and that’s Jon again second from the left. I think the telescope is a likeness of the one Gallileo used (not the real one; that’s apparently in philladelphia).

Tomorrow the real work begins – 8 or 9 parallel presentation sessions from 9am to 6pm, packed full with lots of science. Should be fun. I’ll be trying to twitter throughout, although the lack of mains sockets in at least the main hall will probably hamper me (my battery life isn’t what it used to be…). It’s obviously impossible to go to all the talks, so I’ll be focusing on cosmology and galaxy clusters, perhaps with some radio astronomy mixed in. 🙂

BTW, Dr. Mario M. Bisi has also covered this event, and will presumably be blogging about the rest of the conference too from a solar physics perspective. Is there anyone else blogging this too?

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I will be posting more through the week when I get chance… Between my work interests and my own personal curiosities (and interests from my undergraduate days), there’s a lot to see and take in! Stay tuned if you can… 😉